McGraw-Hill OnlineMcGraw-Hill Higher EducationLearning Center
Student Center | Instructor Center | information Center | Home
Career Resources and Options
Summarizing & Paraphrasing
Internet Primer
Electronic Research
Study Skills Primer
Evaluating Sources
Northern Lights Search Engine
Research and Writing Links
Avoiding Plagiarism
Links for URLs Mentioned
Feedback
Help Center


Reasoning and Writing Well: A Rhetoric, Research Guide, Reader, and Handbook, 3/e
Betty Mattix Dietsch, Marion Technical College


Research and Writing Links

SEARCH ENGINES AND GENERAL SUBJECT DIRECTORIES

Search Engines
Subject Directories
Metasearch Engines
Comparing and Evaluating Search Engines and Web Pages

ACADEMIC SUBJECT DIRECTORIES

DICTIONARIES AND REFERENCE RESOURCES

Dictionaries
Encyclopedias
Biographical References
Quotations
Statistics
Atlases and Maps
Images and Art

CITATION GUIDES

PERIODICALS AND BROADCAST MEDIA

News Directories
Newspapers
Magazines
TV and Radio
Film

BOOKS

Online Books
Online Bookstores

WRITING RESOURCES

OWLs and Online Writing Center
Guides to Grammar and Style
Guides to Writing Papers
Guides to Writing Online Documents
Words and Phrases
Writing Links

ESL RESOURCES


SEARCH ENGINES AND GENERAL SUBJECT DIRECTORIES

• Search Engines

Alta Vista Large full-text search engine. Use to search for narrow, specific topics on the Web. Use Advanced Search to limit hits by date and relevance of key terms.

Google Ranks web sites by link popularity, quality, and content. Use to locate good sites in response to broad, general searches.

HotBot Easy-to-use advanced search feature, Search Smarter, allows you to search by date, by type of file (such as gif or jpeg), and by domain and to specify number of results and the size of descriptions.

Infoseek Large full-text search engine. Ranks hits by relevance and searches for similar pages.

Northern Light Searches not only the Web but also its collection of over 5,000 newswires and periodicals (full-text articles cost $1-$4 to access; article summaries are free). Search results are ranked by relevance and divided into Custom Search Folders.

• Subject Directories

Yahoo! A hierarchical subject directory with search capabilities. Yahoo! is the tool to use when you know what you're looking for.

About.com (formerly The Mining Company). Subject sites created by experts rather than a webcrawler.

Britannica A subject directory of Web sites recommended by Encyclopedia Britannica staff members. Not comprehensive enough for searches but can help you create a bookmark file with excellent links.

• Metasearch Engines

Dogpile A metasearch engine that can search with over two dozen engines, three at a time. You can customize the order and the engines used.

InferenceFind A metasearch engine that does parallel searches with half a dozen search engines and the clusters the results by source.

Ask Jeeves If Jeeves can't answer your question, scroll to the lower half of the page to see the results from several search engines.

• Comparing and Evaluating Search Engines and Web Pages

For links to and a comparison of seven of the most popular search engines, see The Spider's Apprentice.

For quick advice (with links) about choosing the right engine for a particular job, see Nueva School's Library Help page.

For links to several search and metasearch engines, subject indexes, newsgroups, and white and yellow pages, see Infomine's Recommended Search Engines and Finding Tools.

For Web page evaluation, see Michigan State University Writing Center's handy checklist.

For in-depth search tool analysis and updates, see Search Engine Watch.

[Back to Top]


ACADEMIC SUBJECT DIRECTORIES

If you are seeking a specific piece of information, a search engine is more likely to get results, but these subject directories will lead you to a wealth of intriguing resources on the Internet.

World Wide Web Virtual Library Specialized indexes on almost 300 topics maintained by specialists around the world. General subject areas are agriculture, business and economics, computer science, communications and media, education, engineering, humanities, information management, international affairs, law, recreation, regional studies, science, and society. Searchable from the Library's home page.

Voice of the Shuttle Two dozen searchable humanities collections from the University of California at Santa Barbara, including anthropology, area studies, history, literature, philosophy, political & government, and women's studies.

The English Server Searchable collections in the arts and humanities, ranging from new media design to 18th-century cultural history.

Academic Info A well-organized directory of Internet resources for students in almost 100 academic disciplines, from American Literature to World History.

WebGEMS Small, selective lists of links to guides, databases, and other resources in the humanities, social sciences, society and culture, science, and technology and applied sciences. Includes a connection to AltaVista or InfoSeek to search WebGEM pages.

Argus Clearinghouse Small, selective lists of links to academic and general-interest resources in 13 categories, from Arts & Humanities to Social Sciences & Social Issues. Links are rated, and a full-word search is available.

Infomine: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections. A virtual library of 14,000 links in 10 areas (from Biological, Agricultural, and Medical Sciences to Visual and Performing Arts) from the University of California library system.

The Digital Librarian Selected links for about 90 topics, ranging from Africana to children's literature to Web page design.

[Back to Top]


DICTIONARIES AND REFERENCE RESOURCES

The links here are to resources that are free; your campus network may subscribe to other reference resources, such as the Oxford English Dictionary and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

• Dictionaries

Merriam-Webster Online Searchable Webster's Dictionary and Webster's Thesaurus.

Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus Searchable dictionary that allows an Approximate Search if you're not sure of a word's spelling.

A Web of Online Dictionaries Searchable Webster's Dictionary plus links to dictionaries and grammars in other languages, from Albanian to Yiddish.

OneLook Dictionaries Metasearch of and links to specialized dictionaries on diverse topics, from forest pathology to Italian cooking or Eastern philosophy.

Oxford English Dictionary The definitive dictionary of the English language. An online version is supposed to be available to the public in October 1999; it may currently be available on your campus network, however.

• Encyclopedias

Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia 14,000 brief entries for fast fact-checking.

Encarta Online Concise, free, searchable version of the Encarta Encyclopedia on CD-ROM by Microsoft.

• Biographical References

Biographical Dictionary Brief entries about some 27,000 notable men and women. See also the Links to biography-related sites from Astronauts to Obituaries to Science Fiction writers.

Lives, The Biography Resource Links to thousands of biographical sites, memoirs, and oral histories of individuals and groups (from African American soldiers to women in aviation).

• Quotations

quoteland.com Quotations searchable by topic, literary quotations, humorous quotations, and a handful of audio quotations from TV, movies, and music.

• Statistics

FedStats Links to statistics from some 70 Federal agencies.

Statistical Resources on the Web Collection of links from the University of Michigan.

• Atlases and Maps

CIA World Factbook Background information and maps for every country in the world.

National Geographic's Map Machine Atlas Point-and-click maps with brief information about each country.

Digital Librarian's Maps and Geography Links Historical maps, maps of space, road maps--links to a wide variety of maps and geographical societies.

• Images and Art

Finding Images Online: Links to Image Resources. A subject directory of image sites, from Aboriginal cultures to whales.

The Amazing Picture Machine Searchable graphics database.

WebMuseum, Paris Links to artwork and museums around the world.

National Museum of American Art Over 3,000 images in its browsable collection.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Large, searchable database of over half the the holdings of the De Young Museum and the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

Art History Resources on the Web Links organized by era. From Sweet Briar College.

[Back to Top]


CITATION GUIDES

MLA (Modern Language Association) Style MLA-style citations for WWW documents. These are the only MLA-authorized guidelines on the Internet.

APA (American Psychological Association) Style APA-style citations for WWW documents.

Bibliography Styles Handbook Online version of MLA and APA citation styles from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Chicago Style Examples of Chicago Manual of Style citations from the University of Madison-Wisconsin Writing Center.

International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Citation Guides for Electronic Documents A variety of online-citation styles derived from MLA and APA styles.

Columbia Guide to Online Style (by Janice Walker). Highlights from a new guidebook for online styles in the humanities and the sciences.

[Back to Top]


PERIODICALS AND BROADCAST MEDIA

• News Directories

American Journalism Review (AJR) Newslink Newspapers (including campus newspapers), magazines, and radio/TV links around the world.

NewsCentral 3,500 links to newspapers around the world.

News Directory.com Over 10,000 links to national and international newspapers and magazines as well as television.

News Resource News sources around the world--some mainstream (Time World Wide) and some less familiar (such as Hispanic/Latino News Service or Tabloid News Services).

U-Wire Student-written, college-focused newswire with daily feeds from 400 U.S. campuses.

• Newspapers

Most large newspapers have an archive of back issues, but many of them charge a nominal fee for access to the full text of archived articles.

Boston Globe

Christian Science Monitor

Los Angeles Times

New York Times

Washington Post

trib.com the Internet newspaper from Associated Press.

Wall Street Journal Two weeks of free access.

• Magazines

Usually, the current issue of an online magazine is available for free but a fee is charged to access archived articles.

Atlantic Unbound Online version of Atlantic Monthly.

Discover Magazine

The Economist

Newsweek

Salon Magazine

Scientific American

Smithsonian

Time

• TV and Radio

ABC News

CBS News

CNN

MSNBC A joint venture of Microsoft and NBC.

National Public Radio Online

PBS Online

BBC News Online

CBC (Canada)

• Film

Internet Movie Database Information about 180,000 films.

MovieWEB Previews of current films from 10 studios.

[Back to Top]


BOOKS

• Online Books

On-Line Books Page From Carnegie-Mellon University, links to over 9,000 books that can be read for free on the Internet. Mainly out-of-copyright classics in English but also foreign language archives and specialty archives (from children's literature to science fiction). (Beware: some of these files are huge.)

Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts Classics in English and American literature and Western philosophy online and downloadable as PDF files. Many books are searchable.

Project Gutenberg Public-domain books--light literature, heavy literature, and reference books in "plain vanilla ASCII."

Books in Chains English resources on the Web, including links to indexes, electronic texts, specific canons/disciplines, libraries and institutions, booksellers, author pages, and literary magazines on the Web.

First Chapters (New York Times Books). First chapters of some of the new books reviewed in The New York Times.

BookwirePublishers Weekly Web page, including links to online book review magazines.

• Online Bookstores

amazon.com

Borders.com

Barnes & Noble

The Independent Reader Recommendations by leading independent bookstores.

[Back to Top]


WRITING RESOURCES

• OWLs and Online Writing Centers

Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue. Excellent resources for writers, including instructional handouts on writing concerns and points of grammar. Includes links to dozens of other OWLs.

The Writing Center at Colorado State University. In its Reference Materials are handouts about writing, research, oral presentations, and graphics.

The Writing Center at Hunter College. Online handouts about the writing process, grammar and mechanics, writing research papers, and business and technical writing.

The Writing Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. See especially the links for Online Help for Common Writing Assignments and Problems and the links for HTML and Web Page Design Resources.

• Guides to Grammar and Style

Guide to Grammar and Writing Concise hypertext guide from Capital Community-Technical College in Hartford, CT.. Includes 150 Interactive Quizzes, an excellent list of Online Resources for Writing, and Grammar FAQs.

Elements of Style by William Strunk, 1918 edition. The first edition of the concise classic guide to style and usage.

• Guides to Writing Papers

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant Interactive online writer's guide from Boise State University. Contains practical exercises and activities for each part of the writing process.

Research QuickStudy from the University of Minnesota. Online guide to the research process in the library and online.

Proofreading Symbols A quick review of proofreading symbols and abbreviations.

• Guides to Writing Online Documents

Web Style Guide From Yale University, guidelines for the design and editorial content of Web pages.

Good Documents Guidelines for creating online business documents.

Core Rules of Netiquette 10 key points for appropriate online communication.

• Words and Phrases

Commonly Confused Words Definitions and examples of commonly confused words from the Author's Guide of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Use the Find command on your browser to locate the word that's confusing you.

Deadwood Phrases Lists of wordy phrases and ways to tighten them (from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).

The Word Detective by Evan Morris. Word and phrase origins from Morris's newspaper column.

• Writing Links

Garbl's Writing Resources Online A comprehensive listing of links by a professional writer about grammar, style and usage, plain language, words, reference sources, online writing experts, word play, and a writing bookshelf.

Indispensable Writing Resources Links to reference materials on the Internet.

[Back to Top]


ESL RESOURCES

ESL Web Guide Over 2,000 links for ESL students and teachers.

On-Line English Grammar Searchable hypertext of grammar basics. Sound files are available too.

Lists of Grammar Lists Links for irregular verbs, spelling rules, verb-preposition combinations, linking verbs, count and noncount nouns, and conjunctions from Georgia State University.

Activities for ESL Students Self-study quizzes, crossword puzzles, and links created by ESL teachers from around the world for The Internet TESL Journal.

[Back to Top]